Twitch’s new SUBchallenge faces a barrage of criticism

Twitch’s upcoming SUBchallenge has not been well received by the community. In the challenge, streamers are supposed to collect new subs and then get rewards for them later. Unfortunately, the effort and the gifts are not in proportion to each other and accordingly, it hailed criticism from streamers and viewers.

What is the SUBchallenge?

Twitch has once again come up with something fantastic and, as is often the case with its ideas, has met with a lot of criticism. This idea is called SUBchallenge. Streamers are supposed to gain new subscribers. You get new subscribers when users either subscribe themselves or give away subscriptions on the channel of the streamer. However, only the subscribers collected during the SUBchallenge count in the challenge and not those that the streamer already had before. After that, there are rewards for the new subscriptions collected. And they are not very exciting, hence the criticism from the community.

The rewards of the challenge

These rewards are mainly merch products and Amazon vouchers that the streamer gets after the challenge is over. Twitch says that the rewards are staggered according to the number of subscriptions gained. We have listed them here for you: With 250 new subscriptions, the streamer gets an Amazon voucher for 20 euros and a Twitch beanie.

For 750 subscriptions or more, the streamer gets an Amazon voucher for 20 euros, a Twitch scarf, a drinking cup and a ring light (which most streamers probably already own anyway). From 1,500 subscriptions, the streamer gets an Amazon voucher for 35 euros, an Amazon Fire TV Cube, a Twitch backpack and a Twitch scarf.

From 2,500 subscriptions, the streamer gets an Amazon voucher for 50 euros, a water bottle, a Sonos One, a Twitch beanie and backpack. From 5,500 subscriptions, the streamer gets an Amazon voucher for 50 euros, the water bottle, a Twitch beanie, a Twitch duffel bag, Oculus Quest 2 and a PC-compatible cable. In short, you’re a walking merchandise package and you’re also promoting Twitch for free.

The Criticism of Twitch’s Challenge

The SUBchallenge starts on April 11 and goes until April 24. Only Twitch partners can participate, which are all channels that have a purple check mark behind their name. In Germany, only 300 people can sign up for it. However, the challenge will also be held in Italy, England, France and Spain. The problem with this challenge is that once again it is Twitch that benefits from the challenge and not the streamers or the viewers.

Neither the viewers nor the streamers like the idea. As I said, the rewards are a single merchandise package with which the streamer also advertises Twitch, so to speak. And who really needs a Twitch scarf? Besides, these rewards are out of proportion to the effort you have to put in to get that many subscriptions together – especially for smaller streamers.

To put it in perspective: you would have to spend around 22,000 euros for the 5,500 subscriptions in order to get the rewards worth maybe 500 euros. That’s just not worth it for the streamers. Another point of criticism is that all smaller streamers are excluded from the challenge and only the larger streamers are allowed to participate. Also, the community doesn’t get anything out of the support, because only the streamer gets the rewards, which don’t seem very desirable either.

Many people from the community found the action “hypocritical” and were not excited at all. The whole thing is reminiscent of a Twitch action that also took place recently and earned just as much criticism. It was about the Boost promotion, in which viewers were supposed to pay so that their favorite streamers (in this case, mainly smaller streamers) would be listed higher on the main page and get more attention.

The criticism was very similar in this case: once again, viewers had to pay money to boost streamers, whereas Twitch could have easily done this without money. The community didn’t like the feature, and after a troll uploaded nude pictures on the main page, the feature was quickly taken down.